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MEDIA DAY PRESEASON POLL:
- Belmont
- Morehead State
- Murray State
- SEMO
- Tennessee State
- Austin Peay
- SIUE
- Tennessee Tech
- Eastern Illinois
- UT Martin
MEDIA DAY PRESEASON ALL CONFERENCE TEAM:
-Johni Broome – F – Morehead State
-Tevin Brown – G – Murray State
-Jr. Clay – G – Tennessee Tech
-Chris Harris – G – SEMO
-Carlos Marshall Jr. – G – Tennessee State
-Grayson Murray – G – Belmont
-Nick Muszynski – C – Belmont
-Skyelar Potter – G – Morehead State
-Luke Smith – G – Belmont
-KJ Williams – F – Murray State
COMMENTS FROM DAVID:
-Eastern Kentucky and Jacksonville State have left the conference to join the Atlantic Sun, and Austin Peay will be joining them next year. That makes the OVC a single division, ten-team league.
-Belmont is perhaps in the running of the most under-rewarded team in college basketball over the past couple of seasons. In the 2019-2020 season they finished in first place and won the OVC Tournament to advance to the NCAA Tournament!! The problem was the NCAA Tournament was cancelled…but they had all their players returning the next season and tried to put together a strong OOC schedule The problem was that a lot of those games ended up not getting played. They were still the first place team in the conference though and lost just four games all year! Unfortunately one of those was the OVC Championship game against a Morehead State team they had beaten and finished ahead of during the regular season. And that was it. No NCAA Tournament. No NIT. No respect. Belmont, again, has all five starters back. They are one of the better UTR teams out there, and may have an outside shot at playing their way inside the bubble. Nick Muszynski is probably the best big man in the league and they have some great shooters on the perimeter as well.
-Morehead State posted a 17-3 record in league play and won the OVC Tournament. While they did lose some key pieces and have just two starters back, they add a couple of pretty solid transfers and have some guys back that contributed off the bench as well.
-Murray State had a less stellar season than what we normally see out of the Racers, but with four starters, including KJ Williams, they will once again be close to the top of the standings this year.
After that there is pretty big drop off.
-SEMO has all five starters back and that experience seems to have people thinking they can finish in the top half of the league, but they won just 11 games a year ago. They did look a lot better down the stretch winning four of their last five before losing in the conference tournament so maybe they can take some of that momentum into this season.
-Tennessee State won just four games last year and is in complete reset mode with no returning starters. They do have some guys back that were injured last year and some key players who transferred in, so we should see some improvement from them this year.
-Austin Peay has just one starter back, and it’s not Terry Taylor, who was the best player in the league a year ago. They are in complete reset mode and could be in for a long season.
-SIUE lost eight of their last nine games to end the season last year, so while three starters are back it’s hard to say that the expectations are all that high.
-Tennessee Tech has a good coach in John Pelphrey (at least I think so) and a good player in Jr. Clay. They don’t seem to have much else, though. I thought Pelphrey was a fantastic hire who would really be able to get this program going, but they’re coming off a year where they were just 5-22 and have shown very few signs of improvement.
-Eastern Illinois has a new coach in Marty Simmons and he has his work cut out for him. Just one starter is back from a year ago and there are a lot of question marks surrounding this team.
-UT Martin is coming off a year where they dealt with severe off the court issues. Coach Anthony Stewart died just before the season started and the team was understandably effected by that all season long. They’ve got a new young coach in Ryan Ridder and have had a bit of a roster overhaul as well as they try and get things back on the right track.